Today's random thoughts

I lived in Ethiopia for 7 years. When I came back to Kenya, I used to talk about Ethiopia but no one used to believe me. This puzzled me on various levels. How did one have the audacity to disagree with me, and they had never stepped outside Nairobi? Okay, let's go with the 'maybe-they-read-a-lot' spiel. Nah. That was never it.

Anyway, one of the main bones of contention was how much one birr (the Ethiopian currency) was in comparison to the Kenyan shilling. Kenyans seem to have an innate arrogance about how much better they are than other Eastern Africans, and must therefore, of course, OBVIOUSLY, have a stronger currency. When I left, 1 birr was 10 bob. And of course, no one believed that. Because they knew so much better.

Arrogance is the bane of human existence (says the girl whose blog is a shrine to herself). I was having a (gruesome) conversation with my pregnant cousin and my mother about how the reason men beat their wives is because they've arrogantly bought into the lie that perpetuates all -isms of society. They've believed that they are better than women, and that women deserve everything that's coming to them. Cousin spoke of a dude who used to sleep with a gun under his pillow and tell her if she ever wanted to leave him, she'd leave her brains behind. Another used to beat his wife so much it would take 3 months for the scars to heal. Then he re-married a chick who he used to beat over her mother's grave.

The mind is a strange thing. It can convince you to do things you really would not ordinarily be doing (cut off your penis, for example, or stay in an incredibly abusive relationship). According to Cousin and Mommy Dearest, women go crazy when they turn 40. Their minds start screaming at them about how they need something other than their cat to nurture. Their biological clock needles them to a point to a point that they start to throw themselves at men to have a baby, or ask their married friends to be sperm donors.

To be fair, sometimes I think that commonly held beliefs that thus perpetuate religion/mythology (thin line, really, such as the ones stated above) are simply brainwashed into our minds so much that our minds, insane tools of power that they are, simply believe that life is not worth living without the man who batters you into oblivion/diapers you need to change/temple that you cannot live without/prophet that you must commit mass suicides with to make it into the afterlife. But then again, what would I know. I'm just normal.

tSN